52 Pick-Up

Good, rather propulsive crime story. I liked the gritty black side of Detroit angle and how the protagonist (Mitchell) turns out to be a pretty savvy and bold fixer. Not sure I was crazy about the quick, random violence. Ending rather stinks... yes, he (the author) had painted himself into a corner, but still... that was quite implausible and it isn't good when the reader is just shaking his head ... c'mon.

I have been reading (and now re-reading) Elmore Leonard for decades and I plan to do the same, if I’m lucky, for at least another decade or two. Leonard, who is now 86 years old, shows little sign of slowing down or losing his momentum. In fact, if the television series Justified is any indication, his work is as popular as ever. Considering that almost 20 of his books have been made into Hollywood movies, and another half-dozen or so into television movies or series, that is saying something.

52 Pick-Up, first published in 1974, is one of Leonard’s earlier novels – and, despite being set in a Detroit that is almost unrecognizable today, it still holds up well. Leonard has always been one of the great masters of realistic dialogue, show more and dialogue is one of this novel’s strong suits. Leonard’s dialogue is special because he captures more than just cadence and accent. After a few pages of a Leonard novel, the reader begins to hear each character as a unique and recognizable voice that exposes as much about himself in speech as he does by his actions.

Our 52 Pick-Up hero Harry Mitchell is a happily married Detroit businessman who seems to have everything going for him – until he makes one fatal mistake and falls in love with a woman he meets in a bar. Harry is a full-speed-ahead kind of guy, and before long he is spending most of his spare time at the apartment he rented for the second love in his life. When blackmailers threaten to expose Harry’s affair to his wife, he refuses to play their game, preferring to confess to his wife and directly confront his tormentors. And then the blackmailers up the ante with a homicide, and it’s game on. Sometimes it is just not easy to be a blackmailer.

52 Pick-Up is not one of Elmore Leonard’s better known novels (those would have to be the ones that were turned into bigger movies and series such as Hombre, Mr. Majestyk, Get Shorty, Jackie Brown (Rum Punch), and the current Justified, but it is one that Leonard fans are sure to enjoy. These early Leonard works may be a little more difficult to find sometimes, but the extra effort is worth it.

Rated at: 4.0 show less

“52 Pickup,” published in 1974, is a brilliant work by Elmore Leonard. It is a compelling read from beginning to end. This book has all kinds of stuff in it, including adultery, blackmail, murder, snuff films, heroin, etc. It’s the story of what happens when an ordinary guy makes a mistake and, while he is ready to pay for his mistake, the guys who are leaning on him make the price to high. So what does he do? He fights back against mismatched team of blackmailers playing them off, one against another, keeping them on their toes, guessing at his next move, his next counter-strike. Leonard primarily tells his story through Mitchell’s eyes, but at times, the focus is shifted and other characters’ stories are told. The switch show more between scenes and points of view is a little confusing at first, but the work is so good and so fantastically executed, that it works.

Mitchell is owns a small auto parts manufacturer in Detroit. He has been happily married for twenty-two years and both kids are out of the house, one married and one off at college. Mitchell hangs out with Ross, who is busy propositioning everything that moves. They find themselves hanging out at topless bars where Mitchell meets Cini and he falls hard for her, getting her the apartment, paying her rent, keeping her. But, someone has been watching and filming them from the start and Mitchell is going to have to pay to keep the films from his wife and chamber of commerce and his clients.
What should be a simple payoff doesn’t work out that way when Mitchell balks at the amount and the blackmailers take steps that are irrevocable. He’s still willing to pay, but he’s mad and he is going to give these sons of bitches a run for their money and make sure they understand just what they have tangled with and what they have unleashed.

There is nothing boring, dull, or mundane about this story. Although in Leonard-style, a lot of it is told through dialogue, not all of it is and, once the action starts, its like a spigot that can’t be turned off and just keeps on flowing.
Good stuff, indeed. show less

There's a line between stupid but believable behavior and behavior that just doesn't add up. A guy who should be getting out of town as fast as possible takes a nap before leaving, that to me is stupid but believable, it's an action that you would expect from one of those characters that can't help but sabotage themselves (you may well know someone in your life who would shoot themselves in the foot like that). The nap is a bad choice, but the character's overall motivation and plan of action makes sense. On the other hand, behavior becomes unbelievable to me when the underling motivation doesn't make sense, or when actions are at odds with a character's underlying motivation. Elmore Leonard intended to populate 52 Pickup with show more characters acting stupidly but believably, but unfortunately the work includes a mix of the believably stupid and the purely unbelievable.

52 Pickup is the story of a group of criminals who try to blackmail a wealthy man named Harry Mitchell, who it turns out isn't just going to just roll over. Mitchell pushes back, and matches wits with the fragmenting group of criminals. The battle of wits is less than satisfying, however, because of certain actions being unbelievable instead of just stupid. Giving a gun back to a crook who has just been caught breaking into your house and who you've just told that a) one of his partners in crime is trying to cheat him, and b) you've just taken pictures of him as evidence is one of those actions that skirts the line between being stupid and being unbelievable. It makes a tiny sliver of sense that you would give him the gun back in hopes that he will kill one of his partners in crime, despite the immediate risk to yourself. What falls solidly into the category of "unbelievable" is when you put up with this break-in and essentially do nothing about it, leave your wife who you love alone and unprotected in this house that has now been broken into by criminals on multiple occasions, at a time when you and your wife have analyzed the situation and figured out that there's almost certainly no way the blackmail material holds any weight against you, and you still do nothing even when you confirm with one of the criminals the next day that the blackmailers have nothing on you anymore. My main gripe about this book is that after he tells his wife about the affair, Mitchell's motivation to cooperate with and pay the criminals stopped making any sense to me. The criminals substitute the blackmail of an affair with the blackmail of framing him for murder in an escalation of their crimes that comes out of nowhere, and that relies on the narrative convenience of the criminals finding Mitchell's gun and the wife not calling the cops even though she knows she should. At this point, however, how would this blackmail possibly work? Three guys with criminal records walk into a police station and say that a prominent businessman has committed murder, their only proof being a tape they clearly made to blackmail him? Best case scenario the criminals risk going to jail for blackmail, worst case the police figure out that the three criminals are the more likely perpetrators, either way the criminals have just as much motivation to keep their mouths shut as Mitchell does. Mitchell is depicted in the book as being smart and level-headed enough to figure this out, but doesn't until his wife spells it out for him, at which point the information doesn't change his behavior at all. Basically, in the time between Mitchell coming clean about the affair and his wife being kidnapped he has no motivation that makes sense, and therefore the actions he takes in that space of time don't make sense either. There's a largely pointless and uninteresting subplot about Mitchell running his business and dealing with a union representative, and the ending is ambiguous as to how everything works out in a way that feels equally as though Elmore Leonard didn't actually care and thought that writing it out would be boring. There weren't any stand-out scenes, the writing was serviceable but bland, and the characters had no depth and had at most a single quality each.

Having recently read The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins I have to say that it's a better crime novel. The writing is faster-paced and better at creating tension, Higgins is better at establishing differences between characters (with dialogue that actually reads differently), and the actions of the characters consistently makes sense. If you want to try out the Crime Fiction genre, or if you are a fan of the genre and haven't read either, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is more worth your time than 52 Pickup. show less

Elmore Leonard at the top of his game. Good Plot, Realistic Dialogue, Great Characters. Currently watching the movie of the same name, and of course, doesn't hold a candle to the book, which is more cinematic than the movie...go figure.

A fairly predictable, easy reading blackmail thriller set in 70's america.

Harry Mitchel an american captain of industry gets caught with a bit on the side after 22 happily married years. The minor legue punks who try and blackmail him run inot the old problem with such schemes - how to make a safe pickup, and is there any honour amoung thieves?

Well writen with goo dialog and believable characters in a range of styles, but somewhat cliched in terms of plot. Very direct with one minor subplot, and few twists. Fortunetly it's a short book where these deficiancies don't become too problematic.

Lots of sex and drugs which almost stays in character without being foist upon the plot - but doesn't add anything either this is probably a show more reflection of the changing times, but no detracts fromt eh enjoyment.

readable, but nothing special. show less

Another excellent Elmore Leonard book. Great character development, lots of action.